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Charles Manson dies at 83

Charles Manson who is the wild - eyed cult leader who master minded a string of gruesome killings in Southern California by his family of young followers, who shattered the peace-and-love ethos of the late 1960s died on Sunday at the age of 83. This is as per the statement of prison officials. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement that Manson died of natural causes Sunday evening at a Kern County hospital but the statement gave no further details of the circumstances that surrounded his death. He had been serving a life sentence at the nearby Corcoran State Prison for being guilty of ordering the murders of nine people which included the actress Sharon Tate. After a long time, Manson had largely faded from headlines and still he became a symbol of terror which he unleashed in the summer of 1969. The late Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Manson, had told the Los Angeles Times in 1994 that the name of Manson had become the name of evil. The latest photograph showed the grey bearded face of the killer still bearing the scar of a swastika which he carved into his forehead decades earlier.

In the 20th century, Manson became one of the most notorious criminal when he directed his female followers who were mostly young to murder seven people in what prosecutors said was part of a plan to incite a war of race. The actress Sharon Tate, who was 26 years of age and eight months pregnant, was stabbed 16 times in the early morning hours on the 9th of August 1969, by members of Manson's cult at the rented hillside house she shared with her husband who was the filmmaker Roman Polanski, in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles. Four friends of the celebrity couple that included hairstylist Jay Sebring and coffee heiress Abigail Folger were also stabbed or shot to death that night by the followers of Manson, who wrote in blood the word 'Pig' on the front door of the home before leaving. At the time Polanski was not at home but was away in Europe. The night after that, the members of Manson's group stabbed grocery owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary to death and then used their blood to write, 'Death to Pigs' and 'Healter Skelter' which actually was a wrongly spelled reference to the Beatles song 'Helter Skelter' on the walls and door of the refrigerator. Although Manson was not responsible for killing any of them personally he was found guilty of ordering their murders.